How to be more helpful here?
I struggle sometimes with how to give back more to the IH community. I recently realized that I've read a lot and learned a lot here and have achieved a modicum of success. There is a fair bit of knowledge from technical to product that I've learned along the way that I'd like to give back to the community (though I still have quite a lot to learn from others as well).
But I have a hard time finding people on IH who genuinely need input or advice. Many posts are kind of self-serving or promotional or repetitive. Any suggestions on how I can best give back? Is there any kind of more direct mentoring opportunities here?
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Sadly I feel IH has become a take not give kind of place. Even the "I made £20mil MRR before breakfast, AMA" are purely about showing off and not offering any kind of genuine support or advice. Many posts are varying degrees of this.
@cbartlett below said "You could share your learnings In your own posts and invite questions.". How many of us have tried that, but get diddly squat responses. It just aint worth bothering any more.
There are always posts that go unanswered, just like you feel your posts fall on deaf ears, commenting and upvoting is usually meaningful to someone.
You could share your learnings In your own posts and invite questions.
I have done that at times and feel like it all just falls on deaf ears. But will continue to.
I also feel IH has a bit of discovery problem.
I mostly end up just seeing what's in the email newsletter. This sometimes triggers some more browsing - but usually I am overwhelmed by the number of groups that IMO do a disservice in terms of community interaction.
I really hope IH does not try to become reddit - where the concept actually seems to work (but I venture to guess) also has a few more users.
Extrapolating that, I am not surprised that much of the posts go unnoticed. Which I also find discouraging. But to put a positive spin on it:
Here as as-well you have to practise to gather attention - the same way you have to do for your business. I guess all we can do is to keep pushing the rock forward to get there.
Hi @cbartlett. What a great question! How can I help is maybe the most important question an indie hacker asks. I'm wondering if you can be more explicit about what you by this part: "I have a hard time finding people on IH who genuinely need input or advice."
It sounds like you've made a lot of attempts but I went to your history (out of curiosity!) and saw you've only posted 2 times in the last year and one of the posts had 29 comments. 29 comments from people who have knowledge and experience is pretty good I'd say! So maybe you're talking about not getting the desired feedback from comments you make?
I know that I often see people asking for advice in the feed. Those posts don't always make it to the top, but if you click "newest" you're sure to find people needing help.
Anyway, your mentorship idea isn't a bad one either!
I'm mostly a lurker here but I learn so much here on IH and really appreciate the people who freely share their experience. If you were putting out how-to content or something like that, I would definitely read it. 🙌
You are right that I did lose a little steam with them in the last year. They rarely got much feedback so wondered if anyone was really reading them or getting anything out of them. But here are all the updates I've posted about my main product. There is at least a dozen in the last 2 years.
Again, I will keep posting these because I feel like there are morsels of advice people can gather from what does (and does) not work for for others.
But it is a little difficult to even find those updates in my post history. I noticed that posts to my "Products" don't show under my "Posts" on my profile. I am not actually sure where they show on the site anymore. Is the "Products" section deprecated in IH?
I know someone who spent a lot of time on IH trying to be helpful and said it was a complete waste. Barely anyone appreciates advice because they’re mostly here looking to make sales.
It’s better to see reality and play the game IH really is. Tell us about your MRR and drop a link to your Twitter.